“As you can hear,” Dr. Silver said, and shrank slightly at Hermione’s fourth scream and the sobs that followed. “Your daughter is very much awake. Naturally, she is very confused; she keeps on rambling about pig warts, magic, and she has several times asked to see a ‘Ronald Weasley’. Does that name sound familiar to you?”

“There is no such thing like magic,” Mr. Granger said softly, and Hermione could hear the faintest trace of impatience in his deep, mellow voice.

“How can you be so stupid?!” Hermione practically yelled, and she sounded like the outraged teenager she never got the chance to be. “You know as well as I do! I showed you my spells, my magic, my bloody wand!”

“Dear Ron,” she wrote. “Perhaps we used to be the bestest of friends, or maybe we never met at all. A few months ago I woke up on a hospital in London, full of memories of a boy the doctors tell me never was. That boy was you. I woke up calling a single name: Ron Weasley."

“Draco Malfoy,” Hermione spoke, once the shock of recognition had faded away into confusion, into thrill. Before he could turn on his heel and escape she grabbed him by his wrists and gaped up at his face, so real it could not be a dream.

"Ron." she said softly, tasting the name as though it was an exquisite desert. "He... I mean, how-" she stuttered, shaking her head, still smiling dazedly. "What I mean to say is, do you know how he's doing? Ron?"

Malfoy snorted. "Why should I know?" He said gruffly. "All I know is that he married that Mudblood and that they're living somewhere near York."

"What do you want me to say? I don't know where he lives! I don't know anything, except for that he married that Mudblood. And I only know that because his ugly face was all over the newspapers for months!"

"Don't call him ugly!" Hermione shrieked, pointing the wand at its owner; a gesture which made Malfoy snicker.

"What are you going to do, Muggle-girl? Hex me? Why don't you give it a shot?"

"I'm not afraid of you." Hermione said plainly, and to her surprise she felt that she wasn't. She doubted he would lay a finger on her, because brutality had never been the way of Draco Malfoy. He enjoyed to tear down his enemies by the effective use of stinging words and invectives, like a spider weakening its prey before spinning its web around it.

Her expression changed immediately, like ice-cream washed away by hot coffee. Her almond-shaped, dark eyes narrowed and her lucius, pink lips became a dangerous, white line. "Malfoy." she said, in a cold voice which did not suit her.

"Beckett." Draco said, in a voice dripping with unpleasantness and dislike.

Hermione gasped and Malfoy stomped on her foot, hard and not very subtly, as though he was trying to squash a cockroach beneath his sole.

The woman by his side paled until she disappeared completely, and Draco Malfoy, the handsome blond who surveyed the entire scene with an expression of wishing to be anywhere else, faded alongside her, leaving Hermione and Ron the only two people in the room; the only two people in the world.

"Who are you and what were you doing together with Malfoy in our house?", Ron demanded, successfully calling Hermione's attention back onto him. He was glaring at her, and though he had glared at her many times before, during all of their quarrels and heated arguments, Hermione couldn't help but notice that this was a different glare. A glare deprived of any underlaying affection beneath the hard blue.

"I thought-" Malfoy said frostily, contemplating her through narrowed eyes. "-you wanted to hear my theories. But if you came here to lecture me about Elf-rights and proper language you might as well leave right now, because I’m not interested in taking advise from a Muggle."

Hermione steeled herself, fighting hard to keep her face soft and lovelorn, the way actresses did in movies when professing their affections, rather than disgusted at the mere thought of harboring feelings above grudging respect for the man currently sipping tea in the Grangers’ living room. ”I love him, Mum,” she said, unable to keep a certain note of stiffness from her tone, though hoping that it would pass by unnoticed.